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Although I haven’t been posting about it much, I have in fact been cooking at home a TON lately. Now that it’s dark and cold by the time I get home from work, getting warm in the kitchen seems like the only and best thing to do. I’ve been focusing on making simple recipes, and getting comfortable with the basics. I’d like to be able to pull together dishes without double and triple checking recipes as I go along, and I figure the best way to do this is just repeat the same thing a few times. The main obstacle for my winter cooking is a BEAUTIFUL antique oven that seems to have it’s own mind regarding temperature. At this point, I’ve used my skills as a scientist to deduce that it generally runs 50 degrees too hot, and once it hits 400 it DOES NOT STOP (while toasting baguettes recently, we got up to 600 degrees, the knob only on 400).

pepita chocolate chip cookies

Using the Joy of Cooking chocolate chip cookie recipe, I made chocolate pepita cookies with roasted, salted pumpkin seeds (I’ve been crazy for these lately: salads, snacking, cookies, you name it). I also added a dash of cinnamon to make the theme of the cookie overall a little more Mexican, but sadly didn’t add enough. But, the end product is still delicious and they baked perfectly in my temperamental oven.

Drop one teaspoon balls of dough 2 inches apart from each other. Bake one sheet at a time, for about 8 minutes. I suggest rotating the sheet after a few minutes, and keep a close eye on them to pull them out at the right time.

Dinner tonight is also very simple and traditional: Roast chicken with gravy and braised carrots, side of brown rice. All recipes from Joy of Cooking, and are easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Chicken with Gravy and Braised Carrots

prepping the bird

Rinse your giblet free chicken (~4 pounds) with water under the faucet and tap dry with paper towels. Rub a generous tablespoon or so of salt all over the outside and inside of your bird. Then brush with 2-3T melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees in an oiled roasting pan for about an hour, till the thigh registers about 180 degrees. Let that bird sit for about 15 minutes before carving (great time to make carrots and gravy!)

I threw some peeled garlic into the pan as an experiment. At the end of the roasting, the garlic was too dry and burnt to do much with, so next time I’m going to experiment with tossing the garlic in with the peel and some more oil. I really want to mash some creamy garlic into the gravy in the future.

15 minute carrots

While the bird roasts, chop about a pound of carrots into similarly sized sticks, and toss in a large saucepan. Simmer, covered, over medium high heat with 1/2 cup chicken broth or water, 1 1/2 T butter, 1T sugar (brown preferred), and 1/4t salt for about 15-20 minutes. Serve with s&p to taste, parmesan (or my latest obsession: ReNero pecorino!), and parsley.

deglazing with white wine

If you want some delicious gravy, it’s easy. I’m not much of a gravy fan myself, and had never made it before, but I definitely will again. Over medium high heat de-glaze the pan drippings with about 1/4 cup dry white wine, scraping up all the bits from the pan. Either in the pan, or moving liquid to a saucepan, whisk in 3/4 cups chicken broth, 1T butter, and 1T flour, until thickened. If using the chicken recipe above you absolutely will not have to add any salt, but pepper to taste and vinegar if you choose.

I haven’t posted since early summer, before I took a trip to Spain that was culinarily amazing. Since then I haven’t been cooking too much because I moved into a new place (with a beautiful antique Wedgewood oven that is crankier to deal with than even myself) and have been working, frankly, too much to cook at the end of the day.

I made some gazpacho when I got back. It was the worst. I felt discouraged.

Today, I have made up for that loss. I made a nice ajo blanco, essentially a white gazpacho of bread, almonds, and garlic. Given my recent kitchen failures, I didn’t want to curse myself by taking photos of the process, so instead I have the finished soup (which looks, frankly, like milk).

This is so simple. I’ve never actually had this dish before so I have no clue whether it is authentic tasting or not, but I am happy with it:

Soak chunks of crustless baguette (~3 cups / 1 baguette) in cold water for 5-10 minutes. While soaking, make an almond powder (ideally, a flour) with 1 cup blanched almonds. You can blanch them yourself by quickly immersing in boiling water, then submerge in cool water and remove the hulls. But I used slivered, blanched almonds which cost just as much without the work. Combine almond flour with 2-3 cloves garlic and 1/2 t salt in a mortar and pestle. Don’t got one? Do your best with a glass and ceramic bowl. Ideally, you should create a paste. I absolutely did not, and this came out fine. By the time you are done mashing, your bread is all soaked and you should squeeze all the excess water out of it, and blend to a paste in a food processor. Then add the almond-garlic paste to the bread and blend. Then add about 1/3 cup olive oil, blending in slowly. Blend in about a cup of chilled water. At this point you should have a nice milky soup, add up to 1T sherry or white wine vinegar and up to 1/2 cup more chilled water to taste. Chill for at least an hour. Serve with homemade croutons (from the cut-off crusts!) and some grapes, melon, or other mild summer fruit.

The recipe above will yield about 4 cups of soup total. The soup is light and refreshing, but also quite rich. At first bite I thought the 3 cloves of garlic were in fact too much, but after a few bites the flavor mellowed significantly. A small bowl was perfect with our dinner, accompanied by an olive plate, green salad, lamb mint sausage, and labneh.

Quick post, since I ended up making a pretty lazy dinner: tacos. And for the most part, I scrounged these together, so I think that’s kinda cool. I think the key to a taco is the quality of tortilla. If you are going to pile on tons of flavor and toppings, or make a batch of enchiladas, go ahead and get Casa Crapito. But if you want something easy (and healthy), it’s worth spending a little more money and a few more calories on the good stuff. Lately I am partial to Mi Abuelita Bonita’s green chili corn tortillas, but these are only available in Northern California.

Other than the tortillas, the only other thing to worry about are your beans. If you have lots of toppings, plain black or pinto beans (drained and rinsed, if canned) are fine. But for a simple taco, I recommend the following: Saute up 1/2 diced onion in some olive oil (canola oil would work, too) on med-low heat. While your onion is cooking, open/drain/rinse a can of black beans. You’ll also have time to chop up 2 cloves garlic and throw them in with the onion. Spice with cayenne pepper and cumin (~1/2t each, to taste). Canned beans are high sodium, so salt to taste/as needed. Give all the flavors a minute to come together and become aromatic, then dump in your beans and heat through:

From there, trudge forth with whatever is in your fridge or cabinets. For me, this involved sour cream, red pepper strips, and a wedge of lime:

Tomorrow I may saute up my lonely little zucchini, or shred some cabbage, or experiment with black bean and goat cheese tacos. I love a bean taco.

**Next day update: black bean and goat cheese quesadilla with diced red peppers and a squeeze of lime was really good for lunch today!! No picture because I like my tortillas burnt and crispy and unphotogenic.

Trader Joes brown rice medley. I never cook rice at home, but this stuff is delicious and hearty and complex is flavor. Don’t be scared by the daikon radish seeds, this stuff is not crunchy at all. It’s chewy in the way a good brown rice should be, with an extra nutty flavor.

Roasted green beans, with lemon wedge. Crank up the oven to 400. Toss trimmed green beans with olive oil, a couple cloves minced garlic, salt, pepper, and grated lemon rind. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Serve with fresh squeezed lemon juice. Although I used fresh green beans, this would definitely be freezer bean friendly, just thaw beforehand or cook frozen for an extra 10 minutes or so.

Roasted garlic bread. Store bought. Couldn’t resist.

Pisto Manchego! With my upcoming trip to Spain, I’m finally diving into some home Spanish cooking. This recipe is incredibly healthy, easy, and surprisingly delicious in it’s simplicity. I pulled it from one of my favorite sources, the New York Times’ Recipe for Health page. What appealed to me at first was that I could use up the zucchini and canned tomatoes I already had lying around, but also that egg cooked in!! Is there anything a runny yolk won’t make taste great?? If you look over the recipe it may look deceptive because there is no spicing, but you won’t notice. It’s also probably the healthiest entree I’ve made all year: it’s just a lot of veggies, and a little bit of oil.

On to the cooking. The great thing about cooking foods like these is that you can chop up your veggies as you go. Timing isn’t really that essential, because remember, it will all cook down for a long time.

Heat up 2T olive oil over medium heat. Toss in 1 chopped onion, cook for a few minutes. Then add in the 4 cloves chopped garlic you cut up while that was cooking, and stir for another couple minutes. Toss in 2 pounds of diced zucchini and/or summer squash, and salt (I used a 2lb package from Trader Joe’s, missing a couple zucchini from last week’s pasta salad). A fun variation would be to add in some bell peppers! Stir your zucchini for about 5 minutes. Then toss in one large can of Muir Glen fire roasted diced tomatoes. I’m not normally a brand girl, but if you’ve ever had Muir Glen roasted tomatoes, you will never turn back, the flavor is off the charts. Make sure to add in a pinch of sugar and a generous helping of salt, and turn up the heat so as to start reducing the liquids a bit. This mixture should stay at this temperature for about 10 minutes. At that point, turn down the heat to med-low, and let the mixture simmer for 30-35 minutes. I stirred every 5-10 minutes or so, and you can also taste for seasoning while stirring. The idea is to get your veggies nice and mushy, and cook off the liquids. If you look at the original recipe, they refer to adding water, but with the canned tomatoes this wasn’t an issue. However, you may want to make sure your mix is staying moist enough.

Now the good part! Create a little well in your mixture, and crack an egg inside. The whole thing is good for 6 or so eggs, but the egg won’t save for leftovers, so just cook what you will eat and save the rest for later. Cover, and cook until the whites are set, but not the yolk. Ready to serve, especially with some shredded asiago for extra flavor and saltiness!

This dish can easily made as a side without an egg. Or you can save it in the fridge, and make leftovers with eggs in the oven. I’m going to toss it with some pasta. This stuff is GREAT, so filling, so yummy, so healthy, and pretty f’ing easy (although a bit time consuming).

Today, I am going to link to original recipes and discuss my own modifications, thoughts, and photos. This is partially out of laziness, but it’s also kind of cool to compare the photos of the online articles with my own end results.

Chicken with Tortilla Chips

The original recipe is from a recent issue of Gourmet, and I stuck pretty close to the original recipe with the following exceptions: I halved the recipe, and all I could get were wings, not drumsticks.

delicious bird

The final result is really delicious! My only concern, once I bit in (notice the impatiently eaten-straight-off-the-sheet wing), I realized that with the skin on and a lightly oiled sheet I had made what could not possibly be considered a particularly healthy dinner. Maybe I’m wrong. But it tasted too good to be healthy. Also, on that same note, I’m not sure what the point of a lightly oiled sheet is as much of the fat from the skin renders onto the pan. The last thing I would mention is that if you are looking for something spicy, there was ZERO punch from the spices (I even sub’bed some cayenne powder), so if that’s what’s important in life to you I would take some liberties. But, I am completely satisfied with this recipe and would definitely try again!

I also made the potato wedges that are linked on the chicken recipe, although I didn’t make any stupid mayo dipping sauce. I also sprinkled all the potatoes with some romano cheese I had lying around as soon as I pulled them from the oven. Now to the real star:

Creamed Corn with Leeks and Bacon

leeks in bacon grease

This recipe is AMAZING. And, dare I say it: the bacon is totally unnecessary! That’s how good it is. The only modification I made was to use frozen corn instead of fresh. I can only imagine how much BETTER it will taste when I definitely make this again with fresh summer corn. The real winner is the leek: while saute’ing up the leeks in the bacon fat, I started to get REALLY excited. Their flavor is mild but absolutely heavenly in this side dish, and I think the powerful and salty bacon overpowers the leeks. In the future I would suggest either cooking the leeks in bacon fat (if you keep a jar), or just using one piece rather than four.

It’s only April but here in the central valley we got hit with a heatwave of 95 degree afternoons. I hadn’t cooked for a while so I was pretty excited to return to the kitchen, but I kept finding recipes that required oven time. This dish is not only very easy but requires very little stovetop time. I will definitely be revisiting in the summer. The following recipe would probably make 3-4 servings, depending on your appetite, and is modified from Cooking Light.

Chicken Fajita Filling: Take about a half pound of chicken breasts and slice into fajita chunks. Mix together 1/4t each chili powder and cumin, and about 1/8t ground chile pepper (or cayennepowder is a good substitute). Lightly salt your chicken, then sprinkle spice mixture evenly over your pieces. Saute in 1t olive oil for about 3 minutes, or until cooked. Remove chicken, and saute 1/2 a red bell pepper and 1/2 cup red onion, each sliced thin. Cook the veggies for only about 2 minutes, then return the chicken in with them and cook another couple minutes.

Heat corn tortillas. Add a few mixed greens. Maybe, if you want a treat, some sour cream. Then chicken and veggies. Then salsa. Marvel at how easy it was to make such a colorful and beautiful dish.

Oh boy, this one is a winner! Not particularly low cal, but healthy nonetheless and vegan up until the last (optional) step.

Peel and cube 1 large yam (or 2 small… and as a side note, I will never refer to a yam as a sweet potato in this blog. To imply they are interchangeable is an insult to their distinct tastes!). Throw your cubes in a pot of salted water, bring to a boil, and simmer for ~10 minutes or until soft. I casually mashed them with a wooden spoon. Stir in juice of 1/2 lemon and salt to taste.

While your yam’s are boiling, heat up 1T oil in a pan over medium heat. Saute up 1 diced onion, a few cloves minced garlic, and 1 chile pepper. As I’m not a spicy food fan I picked up an incredibly mild and inoffensive anaheim pepper, but if you like heat you probably know more about what kind of pepper you’d like in your burrito. I wouldn’t presume to tell you. Once your onions are nice and soft (~5 minutes, stirring occasionally), cook an additional minute or so with generous shakes of each cumin and coriander, and a modest shake of cayenne.

Drain and rinse 1 can of black beans.

Grease up a glass cooking dish (generous amount of cooking spray will do). Load up a flour tortilla with a layer of each: mashed yams, onion mixture, and beans. The amount may vary by the size of your tortilla, I got 5 burritos out of a standard bag of tortillas. Fold each burrito up, and place seam side down into your cooking pan. Make sure your burritos are nice and snug with each other, then bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

While your babies are baking, you have plenty of time to do all the dishes, drink a beer, grate cheddar cheese, and make this delicious corn side:

Heat 1T oil over medium-low heat in a pot of your choosing. Toss in 1 bag of frozen corn (Trader Joe’s Roasted Corn is my favorite, otherwise I will use any brand’s white corn), stir occasionally for 5-10 minutes, until thawed and warm. Stir in 1 small can of diced chilis, some cumin and chili powder, a chopped serrano if so desired, and salt to taste.

Now’s the best part: when your burritos are done baking, sprinkle with aforementioned cheddar cheese, and throw under the broiler until the edges are browned. They will look like this:

That may look like a lot of cheese, but it actually wasn’t. More than anything my modest layer of cheese added crunch and saltiness. I had expected these to be real knife-and-fork burritos, like an enchilada. But I ate ’em with my hands and forked up the droppings along with my corn.